---
title: 'Workspaces, packages, and targets'
---


Bazel builds software from source code organized in a directory tree called a
workspace. Source files in the workspace are organized in a nested hierarchy of
packages, where each package is a directory that contains a set of related
source files and one `BUILD` file. The `BUILD` file specifies what software
outputs can be built from the source.


## Workspace

A _workspace_ is a directory tree on your filesystem that contains the source
files for the software you want to build. Each workspace has a text file named
`WORKSPACE` which may be empty, or may contain references to [external
dependencies](/docs/external) required to build the outputs.

Directories containing a file called `WORKSPACE` are considered the root of a
workspace. Therefore, Bazel ignores any directory trees in a workspace rooted at
a subdirectory containing a `WORKSPACE` file, as they form another workspace.

Bazel also supports `WORKSPACE.bazel` file as an alias of `WORKSPACE` file. If
both files exist, `WORKSPACE.bazel` is used.

### Repositories

Code is organized in _repositories_. The directory containing the `WORKSPACE`
file is the root of the main repository, also called `@`. Other, (external)
repositories are defined in the `WORKSPACE` file using workspace rules, or
generated from modules and extensions in the Bzlmod system. See [external
dependencies overview](/external/overview) for more information.

The workspace rules bundled with Bazel are documented in the [Workspace
Rules](/reference/be/workspace) section in the [Build
Encyclopedia](/reference/be/overview) and the documentation on [embedded
Starlark repository rules](/rules/lib/repo/index).

As external repositories are repositories themselves, they often contain a
`WORKSPACE` file as well. However, these additional `WORKSPACE` files are
ignored by Bazel. In particular, repositories depended upon transitively are not
added automatically.

## Packages

The primary unit of code organization in a repository is the _package_. A
package is a collection of related files and a specification of how they can be
used to produce output artifacts.

A package is defined as a directory containing a file named `BUILD` (or
`BUILD.bazel`). A package includes all files in its directory, plus all
subdirectories beneath it, except those which themselves contain a `BUILD` file.
From this definition, no file or directory may be a part of two different
packages.

For example, in the following directory tree there are two packages, `my/app`,
and the subpackage `my/app/tests`. Note that `my/app/data` is not a package, but
a directory belonging to package `my/app`.

```
src/my/app/BUILD
src/my/app/app.cc
src/my/app/data/input.txt
src/my/app/tests/BUILD
src/my/app/tests/test.cc
```

## Targets

A package is a container of _targets_, which are defined in the package's
`BUILD` file. Most targets are one of two principal kinds, _files_ and _rules_.

Files are further divided into two kinds. _Source files_ are usually written by
the efforts of people, and checked in to the repository. _Generated files_,
sometimes called derived files or output files, are not checked in, but are
generated from source files.

The second kind of target is declared with a _rule_. Each rule instance
specifies the relationship between a set of input and a set of output files. The
inputs to a rule may be source files, but they also may be the outputs of other
rules.

Whether the input to a rule is a source file or a generated file is in most
cases immaterial; what matters is only the contents of that file. This fact
makes it easy to replace a complex source file with a generated file produced by
a rule, such as happens when the burden of manually maintaining a highly
structured file becomes too tiresome, and someone writes a program to derive it.
No change is required to the consumers of that file. Conversely, a generated
file may easily be replaced by a source file with only local changes.

The inputs to a rule may also include _other rules_. The precise meaning of such
relationships is often quite complex and language- or rule-dependent, but
intuitively it is simple: a C++ library rule A might have another C++ library
rule B for an input. The effect of this dependency is that B's header files are
available to A during compilation, B's symbols are available to A during
linking, and B's runtime data is available to A during execution.

An invariant of all rules is that the files generated by a rule always belong to
the same package as the rule itself; it is not possible to generate files into
another package. It is not uncommon for a rule's inputs to come from another
package, though.

Package groups are sets of packages whose purpose is to limit accessibility of
certain rules. Package groups are defined by the `package_group` function. They
have three properties: the list of packages they contain, their name, and other
package groups they include. The only allowed ways to refer to them are from the
`visibility` attribute of rules or from the `default_visibility` attribute of
the `package` function; they do not generate or consume files. For more
information, refer to the [`package_group`
documentation](/reference/be/functions#package_group).

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